“I hear ya!” echoed back to him. “Yeah, some of these bones is wearin’ trinkets that are prob’ly gold. But it don’t exactly put me none at ease that they’s all squashed, same as the bones.
“All the while I’m tryin’ to look around, I’m feelin’ more and more nervous ‘bout what’s above my head. I built myself a little fire over at the foot of one of them big round columns I told you ‘bout; there’s a lot of loose brush that’s built up over the years in here, so I figured I’d use some of it to help see better. Soon as the blaze gets big enough to light things up a bit, I’ll feel a whole lot better. That damn coal black ceiling gives me the shivers and quakes.
“You know, if I didn’t know better, I say it looks like … huh? What the hell! Columns can’t move! Oh, Jesus God Almighty Christ! No! No!”
Delbert turned white, his ears assaulted by a hail of throat-wrenching screams abruptly cut off yet still echoing through the mound’s interior. He knew this was no prank, as only unimaginable agony could cause such shrieks. He tried to call out to his friend, but he could not get the sound beyond the thick lump of terror that now lodged in his throat.
“Pete?” he finally managed to whisper; his second attempt was somewhat louder. A sudden jolt of adrenaline made him cry out Pete’s name over and over hysterically. It occurred to him that he should go in there after Pete, but his body refused to obey that command; his overloaded brain had simply shut down.
The next moment, Delbert heard something emanating from deep within the mound, a sniffing or gurgling sound — he could not be sure. Whatever it was, it ripped the last remnants of hope from his heart, leaving him short of breath and in a panic. He had no idea that a stream of urine was running down his leg.
“Pete,” he called again. “What’s wrong? Are you all right, Pete? Somethin’ in there with ya, ain’t it? Come on, answer me, Pete!” He was sure he now heard an additional sound from within the mound, a lapping noise like a cat makes as it eats. On top of that, he was sure he heard breathing, really big breathing.
Recalling the rope tightly wound around his waist, Delbert began to pull its length toward him, reluctantly at first, then more quickly. He soon gathered more than enough rope to account for the distance Pete had traveled, credible proof that Pete was no longer on the other end. He dropped the rope as if it were red hot.
He felt his body growing cold, icy cold all over. Involuntary whimpers began issuing from his throat. “Petey boy,” he mumbled. “Somethin’s got my Petey boy and I gotta help him.” He repeated those same words over and over until they rose to a screeching crescendo.
The rope suddenly rose up from the ground and stretched itself taut. Before thought could spring into Delbert’s confused mind, his body lurched forward several feet, slamming into the narrow entrance of the cave.
He struggled, frantically fumbling to untie the rope before it cut his wedged body in half. He had no doubt that whatever held the other end of the rope was not human.
A second mighty draw on the line somehow managed to pull Delbert’s entire body through the tiny entrance into darkness. He twisted wildly in an effort to gain solid purchase, but his torn and bleeding form flipped mercilessly against the dirt floor and jagged walls. For one instant, he seemed suspended above an empty, lightless abyss, but shooting pain returned him to the reality of the moment as his head, arms and shoulders struck unseen obstacles again and again.
An eternity later, he came to an abrupt halt. Broken and bleeding, he lay face down on the cold, damp ground, savoring even its rough unevenness. A few feet away, he recognized the stub of Pete’s still burning flare; reaching out despite his agony, he pulled it to him. The comfort he received at having light instantly faded when, after forcing himself to rise, he recognized the source of the unevenness beneath him — he had been lying on the bloody, horribly shattered bones of a human being. Amongst the bones of a crushed hand, he recognized the friendship ring he had given Pete several years before.
He screamed and jumped to his feet, mindless of the protests from his damaged limbs. Trembling, he raised the burning flare upward in an attempt to illuminate the darkness above his head, the likely source of whatever had murdered his friend. As he squinted into the shadows, his body began to convulse as he stared fixedly into the incredible mass of teeth set firmly in the face of the huge round piledriver that was furiously descending upon him from above.
In the Fall of 1920, a peculiar pilgrimage took place in Hoppwood County shortly after Lyla Hoppwood passed away.
Nate MacGregor, whose pasture directly sided the Hoppwood property, telephoned Sheriff Boyle to report that a “foldin’ cardtable, black and ‘bout forty foot tall” was crossing his land at a slow lumbering gait, heading due north. His fields, he claimed, were littered with tons of boulders, sod and uprooted Sycamore trees that had fallen from the earthen mound set atop the headless, faceless intruder.
Sheriff Boyle knew the only Sycamores in the area were on the Hoppwood property. He had also received notice that same day that two young local men, now missing for two days, had been last seen walking in the direction of that same property. Putting two and two together was not hard, especially after the Sheriff discovered a huge patch of newly uprooted earth in the woods near the Hoppwood mansion. It looked as though someone had used a cookie cutter to impress six-foot circles into the ground, circles containing the mutilated skeletons of apparently hundreds of long-dead Indians, plus two very fresh corpses. The Sheriff could not help but recall the queer tales Miss Hoppwood, her daddy and his daddy before him had told concerning their unique “tenant.”
As word of the exotic traveler spread, people turned out in droves, hoping for a glimpse of the outlandish spectacle that had the whole town talking. All had heard, although few had truly believed, the stories the Hoppwood family had told for generations. In light of this new evidence, however, skepticism quickly waned. Initial reactions to the strange loping oddity were a mix of fear and amazement, but once folks recognized the bizarre creature as a long term resident and one of their own, a degree of sympathy for it began to develop; after all, it had lived in their midst for decades without bothering a soul until a couple of shiftless poachers had invaded its lair. Surely they had deserved whatever fate they had received. The poor creature was obviously only tramping across the land now in search of privacy and a more secure shelter.
Spectators traveled from farm to farm just to catch a glimpse of the wonder, their awed whispers becoming cheers of encouragement as the bizarre being paraded before them. Although its newfound fans were convinced Miss Hoppwood’s displaced tenant meant no harm to anyone, one unfortunate incident did occur. A young couple, outsiders without local connections, were instantly crushed flat by a previously unseen appendage that telescoped down from the creature’s torso. They were strangers to the community and had foolishly ventured too near the mammoth, column-like legs, so they only had themselves to blame for their deaths.
Despite a seeming lack of eyes or ears, the unearthly pilgrim marched on, mile after mile, unerringly headed toward the only suitable refuge in the area, the unexplored subterranean caverns on Nub Jenkins’ farm.
By the time the spectacular creature arrived and eased itself into what was believed to be the largest the of Jenkins’ caverns, it had been unanimously accepted into the hearts of the citizens of Madden County. The cavern was voted an historic landmark the next day, and the beast itself pronounced an endangered species to be kept secret and protected at all cost. Nub and a handful of volunteers encircled the cavern area with barbed-wire fence, dotting its length with signs that alternately declared, “No Trespassing” and “Do Not Disturb Tenant.”
As Nub put it, “Mind ya, the critter may look like some black titan’s unmade bed, but that ain’t no call for actin’ prejudice to’rd it!”
The Black Massif
In a matter of just a few years, the brilliance of the Sun noticeably diminished in contrast to the simultaneous slow but constant increase in t
he heat with which it bombarded the satellite worlds imprisoned by its gravitational hold. The subsequent diminishing of the polar ice caused the boiling seas and oceans to gradually swallow more and more dry land around the globe until finally nothing remained above-water but the fragmented continent of Zothique and a few remote and uninhabitable peaks representing the remnants of the highest mountain ranges.
Those possessing prescient abilities — sorcerers, wizards and necromancers of various corners of the world — foresaw disaster and escaped the impending flood by fleeing to the sanctuaries of the small towns, isolated villages, and ruins of formerly great metropolises that, like the scars of wounds as yet unhealed, dotted the landmass of Zothique. Once there, those powerful magi recognized the precarious nature of their situation to the extent that they joined forces to project an invisible protective shell around the whole of the continent. By controlling the temperature and the weather within this safeguarding enclosure, they maintained a tolerable, self-contained environment for themselves and the unsuspecting citizenry of Zothique; the rest of humanity was abandoned, condemned to cruel demise in the searing blast of ever-increasing, scorching heat. As the temperature outside the sheltering carapace rose to lethal levels, the oceans receded until they eventually evaporated entirely. Within a matter of a few years, the once-lush surface of Earth was reduced to a vast and lifeless desert but for the oasis of Zothique.
Having avoided the immediate emergency, the newly-migrated wizards proceeded to distance themselves from one another, fragmenting the land into feudal estates that they might resume the age-old struggle to wrest as much land and property from each other as possible without regard for the cost. These new masters boldly commandeered the defenseless natives of Zothique, using them as chattel for a seemingly endless stream of campaigns for dominion orchestrated by and for the benefit of the rulers alone. Confusion overwhelmed a land that had long ago lost the secrets of technology and, as a result, civilization quickly reverted to the equivalent of the Dark Ages of a previous millennium.
Fortunately, not all of the power-endowed sorcerers who sought refuge in Zothique were concerned with petty conquests. Among those who survived the rising tide and ensuing heat were those known as the Six, a half-dozen of the greatest living thaumaturgic luminaries, both male and female. The Six were unfailingly dedicated to the preservation and ennoblement of mankind. This optimistic congress of Six believed humanity, despite its long and disparate record, possessed the potential to evolve into a wise and benevolent race, should it be allotted sufficient time. With the intent of encouraging this transformation, the Six had copied and conveyed the bulk of the decimated world’s greatest occult libraries and scientific archives to their new stronghold.
Realizing the vast potential the combination of their forces presented, the Six bonded that they might utilize their collective power to utmost effect. By combining the retrieved knowledge of occult studies and ancient scientific information, they made an unparalleled discovery — a means of manipulating the time-space continuum that allowed them to travel through the temporal abyss to any time and location on Earth. They therefore set out to comprehensively search the technological records of their predecessors in hope of finding a solution to the dilemma facing the vestiges of mankind. Such visits were, of necessity, of short duration, as the Six were wise enough to use extreme discretion when venturing into the past. They focused their excursions upon the essential exploration of the most scientifically enlightened eras, particularly the centuries immediately preceding the Great Fall, the holocaust that had set mankind’s progress back innumerable centuries. It was imperative they consult the ancient records of empirical science without altering or disturbing the past in even the slightest detail, least they catastrophically disrupt the hyper-sensitive flow of time.
As they unobtrusively studied the information gleaned from the ancient scientific records, the Six began to appreciate the dire ramifications of the solar engine’s extreme acceleration. The Sun, they began to realize, was racing at an unimaginable pace toward its own demise. At the current rate, the nuclear fusion of the core would soon cease due to exhaustion of the hydrogen that fueled that process. Yet the most learned minds of past millennia had determined, based upon centuries of astronomical observations, that the Sun contained sufficient hydrogen to maintain its normal state for another four or five billion years. Something had gone very wrong with the temporal scenario, and the Six were determined to unravel the mystery that they might avert the end of the world.
The tremendous increase in the degree of unbearable heat radiating from the fiery disc clearly foreshadowed the onset of premature stellar disaster. Without fuel, the collapse of the stellar core would relinquish its gravitational grip upon the gaseous outer shell known as the corona. The unrestrained corona, being the hottest part of the Sun, would explode as a nova that would incinerate the entire solar system in a fiery holocaust. The remaining debris would contract as it cooled, eventually condensing into a dark cloud of cold nuclear waste material devoid of all life. According to revised calculations, this terminal conflagration would occur in a mere twenty years’ time.
Undaunted, the Six immediately launched further frantic quests into the past in hope of discovering some means by which to avert the impending disaster. After a seemingly endless stream of further temporal explorations, a plausible solution finally presented itself — if an extraordinary quantity of hydrogen could be extracted from Earth’s atmosphere and chilled to an extreme, the resultant liquid hydrogen could then be held in stasis through the application of a blend of magical and scientific techniques long enough for its volume be enhanced exponentially. Were the resultant mass then plunged directly into the heart of the Sun, it just might rekindle that star’s diminishing process of internal fusion.
All agreed the plan was a monumental gamble as the Sun might very well explode the instant the unnatural injection of hydrogen pierced its outer core, but they also agreed that this was the only feasible option and thus presented a risk worth taking. It was not long however, before they realized two major hurdles still jeopardized any chance that their plan might actually succeed.
First, all of their efforts would have to be in place and ready within fifteen years’ time if they were to have even the remotest chance of accomplishing their goal. Yet even this stringent schedule paled in significance once the Six realized that even the cumulative impact of their combined strength would not be sufficient to execute their plan; a seventh member possessing equal power was required to accomplish so much so quickly.
Without further delay, half of the Six undertook assignments to the past that they might discover the mysterious cause of the Sun’s premature aging. The other three assumed the task of seeking possible candidates for the vital seventh member of their consortium. This continent-wide search began with a series of telepathic broadcasts intended to specifically tune into minds possessing a particularly stringent set of intellectual requirements along with an inborn penchant for manipulating the inestimable powers vital for the prevention of Armageddon.
The quest for someone possessing the proper qualifications indicated that only three potential candidates existed among the whole of Zothique’s population of several hundred thousand. The three magi assigned to the task of ferreting out the candidates included Magla, Rymol and the great Anama, the most powerful and eldest of the Six. Riding upon zoothllamas, a fast and reliable hybrid camelid, they immediately set out to locate and assess the three prospective members.
Rymol, the first to locate his target, met with disappointment. The candidate he found was a bedridden elderly woman far too fragile and weak for consideration. Sadly, Magla’s efforts met with failure as well, for she was drawn to a man who had lost both arms in a futile slaughter meant to expand the miniscule holdings of a necromantic despot. All hope became focused upon Anama’s endeavors.
The mental trail lured Anama to Quilac, a collapsed wreck of a city near the southernmost tip of the continent,
a city that just a century before had been a thriving metropolis of nearly a million citizens. The old sorcerer, accustomed to the calm beauty of a suburban countryside, was shocked and sickened by the misery, poverty and suffering he encountered everywhere in the dark, debris-littered streets of Quilac. Determined, he unwaveringly dove into the muddled mass that represented the degraded vestige of a once proud populace. Although filled with a mixture of pity and revulsion, he continued his search, praying that he would locate the last hope of humanity somewhere within the pest-ridden ruins.
Having traversed the greater part of the city, Anama found himself in a lawless area that had once comprised the very heart of the city’s financial district. In the toppled remnants of once-towering skyscrapers, it seemed those he encountered were naught but muggers, derelicts, prostitutes and muttering madmen. Dirt-encrusted raving maniacs staggered through the streets by day, clinging to life despite the miserable condition of their existence. As the light of day waned, more degraded and misbegotten souls slowly emerged from the shadow-haunted tumult of crumbling office buildings and shops, forced from their hiding places by the threat of starvation. The unbearable hunger he saw in their eyes told him they would eventually set upon one another with cannibalistic passion.
He battled an innate desire to flee the disturbing squalor of the sprawling madhouse. Could, he wondered, even a mind like that which he so desperately sought long resist being absorbed into the ranks of such human garbage?
By carefully exploring the thought-patterns of each subhuman creature he encountered, Anama soon learned the population served as little more than a reserve from which its cruel ruler filled the ranks of his ever-dwindling, ramshackle army. Those forces, devoid of all discipline and training, were then decimated in one horrific battle after another, leaving only the old, the severely disabled and the very young to root out a feeble existence in the twisted ruins. Still, Anama pressed on. Intuition told him he was close to achieving his goal in the surprising form of a teenage boy.
Ancient Exhumations +2 Page 9